At least 43 killed in Egypt train collision

Passengers gather beside the tracks after a train crash that killed more than 40 people outside Alexandria. Officials say it's Egypt's deadliest rail accident in years. Ravy shaker/AP

Egypt—At least 43 persons were killed when two train collided in Egypt on Friday. One of the passenger trains smashed into the back of another train outside the Egyptian city of Alexandria. Some 120 others were injured during the accident, informed Egypt’s Health Ministery.

It was not right away clear what made the crash. Egypt’s top prosecutor, Nabil Sadek, has summoned railway officials for questioning, and President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi has ordered the formation of a task force to investigate the crash.

Egyptian news media, quoting the country’s Railways Authority, report that a train headed from the capital, Cairo, rear-ended another train that had been sitting near a station east of Alexandria. “They came up in the air forming a pyramid when they hit each other,” one witness told Reuters. “I started to scream from the rooftops for people to grab some sheets and run.”

The Guardian notes it has been nearly four years since Egypt has witnessed a train crash as deadly as the one that occurred Friday: Not since November 2013, when a collision between a bus and a train killed 27 people, has the notoriously dangerous railway system experienced a tragedy of this scale. But The Associated Press reports accidents are far from uncommon, noting that 1,249 accidents happened last year alone.

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